


microcosm

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Guilt, Kissing, M/M, POV Second Person, Pre-Rogue One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9473621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “I’m sorry for the delay,” you tell him, as congenial as you know how to be anymore.“It’s okay,” the pilot answers, his voice fine and clear even with the lashing it takes from the weather. It’s a kind voice, kinder than you’ve heard in a long time, and you wonder how a man such as this ends up working for the Empire even in this mostly harmless capacity.We all work for the Empire, Galen,you think,one way or another.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [APgeeksout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/gifts).



Eadu was a mess from the first rain-soaked step you took on the landing platform outside the research facility— _your_ research facility, the one Krennic had given to you with pride in his eyes and vanity in his mouth, his every word and action indicating he’d thought you’d be grateful for the pleasure of a newer, even more isolated prison—and it remains a mess to this day, the most sterile, antiseptic mess you’ve ever seen in your life. A hellscape of clean rooms and searing bright lights with the most advanced computers, droids, and equipment that credits could buy. You hate it and you hate that this is where your curiosity and intellect has brought you.

You are ashamed that this is the culmination of your life’s passions.

You are appalled by this and so much more, such wretchedness that you cannot think on the whole of it for fear of your foundations crumbling beneath your feet.

If you were to fall now, it would all be for nothing, but you’d still trade it all for five minutes back on Lah’mu with Lyra still alive and Jyn in your arms. At this point, you’d trade everything you ever cared about just to find yourself back on Grange, a simple shopkeeper or mechanic or, yes, even a farmer, if it meant you didn’t have to be here doing what you were doing for the people who hold the chain wrapped tight around your neck and wrists and waist and ankles. Lyra wouldn’t be dead if you never left Grange. Jyn wouldn’t be—surely not existing was better than whatever has happened to Jyn.

(You can’t make yourself believe this lie no matter how selfish it might be to require Jyn’s existence in a galaxy that doesn’t care about her. But she is the one thing you can’t regret even though she has suffered so, so much for it. You hope she’d forgive you for that if she could.

This bit of greed is the only thing that keeps you you when Krennic would have you be his. The irony of it is not lost on you, not entirely, though it fits you ill.)

The galaxy would be so much safer if you were just a nobody getting by the same as everyone else. You could have been happy on Grange; you wouldn’t have known any different there. It would have been enough to have had datapads and texts shared over the HoloNet to keep your mind occupied. You hadn’t needed this, not until you’d had your first taste of it as a teenager. It was only after that point that you hungered for more.

You would have been lonely, but you’re lonely now, too. Surrounded by so many people, you’re still more alone now than you’ve ever been in your life.

*

The rains of Eadu whip at the facility, the patter a constant background noise that lulls you to sleep at night, but distracts you during the day. They obscure much, those rains, hide the approaches of ships filled with cargo and the stars at night. They hide the sun—you haven’t seen the sun in months now; you’ve forgotten what it is that makes Eadu’s stellar companion unique, its color, closeness and daily cycle. The rains swallow sound and warmth and time when they cause delays for the pilots whose only job it is to get in and get out as quickly as possible, shipments of this, that, and the other coming in every day. All the things you need to complete your life’s work, so much of it that sometimes you have to scramble for space when too much arrives at one time.

Most people don’t need so many things, but you take and give nothing back and you don’t let yourself feel your own concern about the pilot standing on the landing pad, soaked through and shivering and watching with something like violence, something like despair, something like plain annoyance in his eyes.

You don’t always supervise the transfers yourself, but this time you do.

This is an important shipment after all.

The work runs on kyber.

So you jog onto the water-slicked landing pad and out from beneath the safety of the cargo bay entrance and you try to smile at this annoyed, waterlogged man as a trail of your subordinates push hovercarts full of crates toward the facility in a slow, even procession.

The muscles in the pilot’s jaw clench as you approach and up close he looks so young, impossibly young.

“I’m sorry for the delay,” you tell him, as congenial as you know how to be anymore.

“It’s okay,” the pilot answers, his voice fine and clear even with the lashing it takes from the weather. It’s a kind voice, kinder than you’ve heard in a long time, and you wonder how a man such as this ends up working for the Empire even in this mostly harmless capacity.

 _We all work for the Empire, Galen,_ you think, _one way or another_.

“You should come in and dry off,” you offer. “You’re not cleared again for takeoff for another two hours anyway. It’ll be a long wait out here.”

There are so many things yet to do, but when the pilot shrugs and nods and says, “Okay,” you wipe all thought of cataloging the shipment from your mind. It can wait. Just for a few moments, it can wait.

“What’s your name?” you ask.

“Bodhi,” he answers and you like him immediately because he doesn’t reach for a title or a rank or a series of numbers to identify himself even though he, like everyone, probably has a designation floating around somewhere in his Imperial records. He says it like he hadn’t even thought you might have been asking him for any of those things.

“Bodhi,” you reply, finding the sound of it right in your mouth. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Bodhi’s eyes widen and his eyebrows knit together and he’s got a look in his eye like he’s wondering who _you_ are and it’s so refreshing you nearly laugh. ‘Nearly’ is as close as you’ve gotten in years and you allow yourself a moment to marvel at it despite the anemic nature of the achievement.

“I’m Galen Erso,” you say and gesture behind you. “Why don’t we get out of this weather, hmm?”

Bodhi glances at his ship and at you and back again before biting his lip like maybe he’s changed his mind since you first asked. “Okay,” he says again, a little hesitant, but he follows you anyway, trusting you won’t lead him astray.

You don’t intend to do that: lead him astray.

These things just happen sometimes.

*

“Did you always want to be a pilot?” you ask the third time Bodhi brings Jedha’s bounties to your doorstep. In the past, you would have ignored where the crystals came from, but now the truth sits heavy in your chest, locks you in a cage. You would like to deny their provenance; you’d like to send them back.

You can do neither.

Placing a mug of tea before him, you take the chair opposite his in the otherwise empty mess hall. You’d fought with yourself about whether to offer him any at all. It’s your favorite variety, popular on Coruscant for good reason, flavorful and warming, but it was Krennic who’d brought it and so you can’t stomach the thought of drinking it yourself. But the only other thing you have to offer is freeze-dried caf, sludgy and bitter, and you suspect he’s had enough of that in his lifetime already. You don’t want to give him more of those tastes.

“Thank you.” Bodhi wraps his fingers around the mug and stares down into the reddish-brown surface of the liquid, fingers tapping frantically against the porcelain. You think he might not answer your original question, but you don’t pry. It’s not your business anyway. “No,” he says finally. “Or, I don’t know. I’m good at it. Good enough anyway. There aren’t many jobs on Jedha that don’t require you to pick up a blaster anymore.”

You lean in, eyes scanning Bodhi’s face. He doesn’t look at you, but there’s a tension in his shoulders now that wasn’t there before. “You don’t like fighting?” you ask, tempering your voice. It wouldn’t do to sound too interested.

Bodhi laughs, derisive, and shrugs. “Do I look like a fighter?”

Your lips purse together. You don’t want to say it, but you’re thinking it all the same:

 _Anyone can become what they believe they cannot be_.

“You look like a good man,” you say instead and this, at least, you know to be true in your heart. But that doesn’t mean you think he’s not a fighter, too. Good men and fighters are sometimes one and the same. Sometimes, the only good men _are_ fighters. It took you a long time to realize that.

You wish you’d known sooner.

*

“How is Jedha?” you ask.

Bodhi merely shakes his head, grim, and lets himself be led off the landing pad, your hand settling on his shoulder.

He looks up at you and smiles at the contact. He ducks his head just a little too late and you still see all the things he might not have meant for you to see.

The bright blaze of that smile had almost obscured the weariness in his eyes, but almost isn’t good enough and you see everything he might have wanted to hide from others, from you even, though you flatter yourself that you’re different—in general and to him specifically. He might not have wanted you to see his affection, few people do in the Empire and for good reason, but his tiredness, his cynicism, you don’t think he obscures that for your benefit.

He’s never said one way or the other though.

And you’re too afraid to ask.

There’s only so much truth in the galaxy you can allow yourself to know and you hit that limit the minute you struck your agreement with Krennic.

*

He tells you about the occupation of Jedha, the words spilling from his mouth almost before they can form on his tongue. They’re spoken so quickly you’re afraid you’ll have to ask him to repeat himself to get the full story. But then again, you’ve seen enough subjugation for yourself, is it really necessary to hear more of it from Bodhi, Bodhi who cannot even look at you while he speaks, his eyes focused firmly in the center of the table—your table, in your quarters, the table you sit at alone at night, eating dinner sometimes or drinking a glass of caf or working into the early hours. You’ve moved your conversations here, but you hadn’t really known why. It had seemed safer at the time, despite the possibility of another sort of gossip altogether, and now you know why.

It had always been for this moment.

“Bodhi,” you say even though your throat wants to close up and his name is fighting you every step of the way out of your mouth. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Your hands find their way to the center of the table, laced together to hide the shaking and Bodhi keeps his eyes on your fingers the whole time. Even when you say Death Star—it gets easier once those words find their way past your teeth, like the worst is over once you’ve named the monster—he remains… himself. Quiet. Gentle.

No anger, no hatred twists his mouth or wrinkles his brow. He sighs and it’s chilly with despair, but that’s not so unusual, even the more avid of your scientists have faced their own moments of reckoning. You caught one crying in a bathroom once—no, not caught, you didn’t interfere at the time, merely stepped back into the hallway and allowed them their privacy—and another took a length of metal to one of the holoprojectors that spit forth details about the project’s completion status. You’d hid the wreckage between the lines on a requisition form, claiming a malfunction had caused the destruction of the unit instead of brute force and desperation, fear and pain and betrayal.

“That’s what I’ve been—” Bringing his hand to his mouth, Bodhi squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens his eyes again, he’s an entirely different man. “I’ve been hauling…? I’m only a cargo pilot.” But even as he says it, you know it’s not the truth. He knows. He’s known. Not the specifics obviously. But the big picture? He’s always known. He’s not naïve even though he’s the picture of innocence.

You’d thought him beautiful before, maybe the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen, but he is incandescent in a different way now. You’ve exposed him to this cracked underbelly he’d stumbled into and broken him in the process, but he’s stronger than he knows and you watch as he rebuilds himself before your eyes.

It’s a wonder to behold.

“No one is only anything,” you say. “We’re all a part of it even when we don’t want to be.”

Most people would have denied it, you believe, shrugging off their complacency like the worn skin it is, leaving themselves unblemished as soon as it’s shed. Most people aren’t Bodhi though and when he finally looks at you, his eyes filled with terrified, terrifying purpose, he says, “How do we make it right?”

And you swallow because the answer is easy. It comes to you immediately, cold and calculating in ways you don’t want to believe you’re capable of. Every day evidence to the contrary slaps you in the face with its obviousness, but just this once you’d like to pretend you’re a better man than you are.

But you can’t.

And Bodhi will suffer for it, you’re sure. Just hopefully not too much.

You shouldn’t be able to reach for this solution so quickly, your conscience says, suppressed though it’s been for many years. “There’s something you can do,” you say, voice steady because it has to be—you have to be. “But you have to be brave. We don’t make it right, Bodhi, but _you_ can.”

“How?”

So you tell him that, too, and you witness the despair receding just a little bit, replaced in tiny, shattered fragments by hope and belief and you think for the first time that maybe it’s all been worth it, that you’ll do this. The both of you. Together.

There’d always been a piece in your plan that never fit, a hole that couldn’t be filled. But now you have Bodhi and he does all of that and more.

Perhaps you’ve always known Bodhi was the answer to your problem. Ever since you spoke to him that first time.

You would apologize if you could.

Instead, you hand over the holorecording that’s haunted your every hour since you made it, walking through wet duracrete to reach it and then return with the thing in hand. It is an abomination; it’s proof of your damnation and your paltry attempts to patch salvation into it. “Find Saw Gerrera. He’s in Jedha City. He’ll know what to do.” Already a tension eases inside of you, transferring, you think, to this extraordinary pilot you’ve befriended.

In another life, with more time, it might have been more. As it is, you cannot allow it to be anything.

Nodding, fearful, Bodhi says, “Okay.” His hand tightens into a fist around the recording. “Yes, okay.”

It’s been a long time since you’ve been this proud of another person; you’d like to hold onto this moment forever.

You’d like, in fact, to hold onto him. Just for a little while. But though you might be selfish, you’re not that selfish. And though you’d like to tell him you care for him, already despite how short a time you’ve known one another, you don’t do that either. It won’t help him succeed and it won’t make you feel better and there’s no point in thinking otherwise except—

“Bodhi,” you say and you walk toward him and you press your palm to his cheek, his skin overwarm to your touch. In his eyes you see something like the want that clamors inside of you, an aching, fragile thing, ill-timed and ill-positioned, but no less real for its inconvenience. There’s no future for you here, you both know that, but when you lean in, he reaches for you, his fingers smooth as they touch your jaw. The scent of metal clings to him, as you’re sure the antiseptic, cold scent of the lab clings to you, and you’re afraid you’ll forget it even though you know you probably won’t live long enough once news gets out. Krennic will never…

“Galen,” he says, his breath ghosting across your lips, and you think it might be the first time you’ve heard him say your name and you couldn’t have picked a better moment for it. It’s definitely the first time in years that anyone’s said it with anything approaching affection and you find now that you’ve missed that. You miss Lyra and Jyn and you miss Bodhi already even though he’s right here with you and he’s pressing his lips against yours, his mouth soft and eager and sweet all at once.

He deserves better than he’s been given. He deserves better than you.

And he’ll have it, you think, out there with the Rebellion. He’ll reach Saw and they’ll make it work. Bodhi will be safe. The whole galaxy may be safe now. If Jyn is out there, maybe she’ll be safe, too—you hope, because the name Erso will be tainted and she might have a hard time of it because he’ll be the biggest traitor the Empire has ever known and Krennic won’t stop until he’s burned everything to the ground even once it no longer matters. And you’ll make sure it no longer matters when it comes down to it if you have to.

You breathe deeply and count backwards from three and tell yourself you’ll pull away when you reach zero.

Three. Two. One.

“I’m sorry, Bodhi,” you say on zero, stepping away even though it feels like your ankles are encased in that wet duracrete from before, heavy and immovable.

And when he lifts his head up, you see that he understands. This is the last moment you’ll ever spend together, you both know that, but it’s worth more than a lifetime as far as you’re concerned.

 _Trust in the Force_ , you think, a well-wish as much as a statement of belief.

When you have nothing, even the tiniest thing becomes everything.

This, this has become everything.

He’ll succeed. You know he will. You don’t have to trust anything to know it’s so.


End file.
